A Princess of Roumania by Paul Park
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I enjoyed the beginning of this book, the modeling of the world, the writing, and the structure; I enjoyed so many parts of the book at that point that I wondered why I did not enjoy the book itself more. The problem with so much of literature is that what works in one book gets repeated so many times in other books that it all wears out. This book feels so much like the introduction to a series that it fails for that very reason, in my view. It is like one long preface. The world of Miranda and the world of the baroness are very separate. Their refusal to come together until the very end of the book weakens the narrative immensely; at the beginning we understand it to be important to Miranda to reach Roumania and for an entire novel she wanders in the same forest having one incident after another. I would not even call what happens to her adventure. The chapters of the book that take place in Roumania are much more active but the refusal of the two separate settings to merge makes everything that actually happens among the baroness and her set to feel like a preamble. The story never feels as though it actually begins. Miranda has the kind of quality one expects from young golden-daughter characters, but also has a blankness that leaves the core of the book wanting. She goes through the motions of being stalwart, surviving against all odds, and this feels very tired. Maybe it’s my reading that’s at fault here, but there’s nothing that happens in this book that feels crucial – and I know when I think about what did happen there were some very crucial moments – but they don’t have the right feeling, they are disconnected. I have the sense that most of this book could be eliminated, at least the Miranda chapters, and she could get to Roumania quickly and get the real story started. A very bad beginning for me, and too much like the world of the Pullman novels – which had their own problems. I suppose I am simply grumpy these days.